Dennis Richards (left), owner and head brewer of Echo Brewing Company, pours grain in to a mill while Jeff Porn right, owner and head brewer of Atom Brewing Company, watches at Echo Brewing Company in Frederick.

Growth: of the craft brewing industry in 2012 was 15% by volume and 17% by dollars

Craft brewers sold: an estimated 13,235,917 barrels of beer in 2012, up from 11,467,337 in 2011

Share of craft brewing: out of total beer sales in 2012 was 6.5% by volume and 10.2% by dollars

Craft brewers sold: $10.2 billion of beer in 2012, up from $8.7 billion in 2011

In 2012: 2,347 craft breweries operated for some or all of the year, comprised of 1,132 brewpubs, 1,118 microbreweries and 97 regional craft breweries

Source: Brewers Association

East Boulder County’s craft brew scene is in a state of flux.

Some breweries are scaling back plans while others are moving forward with prospective openings as soon as this spring. No matter who may be in and who may be out, it’s likely that in a matter of months, from Louisville to Erie, there could be as many as nine operating breweries.

As recently as last summer, there were none.

Most of the recent activity on the brew house scene has taken place in Erie, where Third Triumvirate Brewery is eyeing locations for a tap house while Industrial Revolution Brewing Co. is looking at a mid-July opening of its business at 285 Cheesman St.

The first brewery to commit to Erie — Atom Brewing Co. — recently abandoned plans to move into the old fire station at 600 Briggs St. and will instead team up with Echo Brewing Co. in Frederick to make its beer using Echo’s equipment. Meanwhile, Echo is working on nailing down a location in Historic Downtown Erie for a second brewery, this one a cask and barrel aging facility.

In Louisville, Twelve Degree Brewing once had designs on a space downtown, shelved those plans, and then came back again this year to begin construction on a brewery at 820 Main St. The brewery, which will specialize in creating Belgian craft beers, could open as soon as next month. Meanwhile, efforts by West Flanders Brewing Co. to open a “farm-to-table” tap house on Empire Road have recently stalled, according to the city.

In Lafayette, plans for a trio of breweries — Front Range Brewing Co. on South Boulder Road; Odd13 Brewing on East Simpson Street; and The Post Brewing Co. on West Emma Street — continue to move forward. All expect to be open by late summer.

‘Fraternal rather than cutthroat’

While the jostling goes on between beer-making start-ups from Main Street to Public Road to Briggs Street, the overarching theme between brewers appears to be one of camaraderie over competition. There exists almost a barter culture among brewery owners, Echo co-owner Dennis Richards said, where brewers lend bags of grains or sacks of yeast and then borrow the same when they are in need.

“Everyone is open and wants to help out,” Richards said.

Richards, who opened Echo Brewing in a vacant Frederick warehouse with his twin brother Daniel a year ago, is now extending a helping hand to Atom Brewing Co., which will brew its beer in Echo’s facility a couple of days a week. That will allow Atom to get its product into the market even though it doesn’t have its own brewing facility.

“What other industry would let a competitor into their facility to brew beer?” asked Atom co-owner Jeff Porn, who along with the Richards brothers lives in Erie. “Everybody is in this industry because they love it. Very few people get into craft brewing to get rich.”

Porn’s goal is to build enough of a reputation and following that in a year or two he can open the brewery in Erie he has long wanted to open.

“Ultimately, by the end of the year one, I would like to have a location of my own picked and start the process of building out my own brewery,” he said.

Mike Lawinski, owner of Fate Brewing Co. in Boulder, said such a collaborative approach in the craft brewing industry is more the norm than the exception. Before Fate opened at its new location on 38th Street, Lawinski was teaming up with established breweries like Boulder Beer, Asher and Mountain Sun, to collaborate on special dual-branded concoctions. A few months ago, he partnered with Shine’s head brewer to develop an Imperial IPA called “Let Your Fate Shine.”

Lawinski said some operators enter into contract brewing arrangements, where a brewery makes beer for another brewer. Others rely on an alternating proprietorship, where an outside brewer might get certain hours to use a brewery’s equipment, similar to a time-share arrangement in real estate.

“The brewing industry is unique in that it is really fraternal rather than cutthroat,” Lawinski said.

Make Erie ‘a destination’

And the industry is still young enough and the demand from beer aficionados still strong enough — the craft brewing industry grew in 2012 15 percent by volume and 17 percent by dollars — that Porn and Dennis Richards think there isn’t the danger of market oversaturation just yet. Not even in downtown Erie.

Richards said Echo has already had to triple its space in Frederick since it opened in April 2012. And what he thought would be a 250-barrel output a year turned out to be double that.

“It’s something different that the community didn’t have,” he said.

The same holds for Erie, Porn said.

“Of all the small towns in this area, Erie is the last one not to have a brewery,” he said. “People can’t wait for Old Town Erie to get something and have a reason to go there. Breweries are going to draw a lot of people down there.”

Industrial Revolution Brewing Co. owner Nate Cervantes welcomes other brewers to downtown Erie. He said there’s plenty of room for both Echo’s Kirby Kolsch German blonde ale and Nocturnal Black Double IPA and his cream ale, vanilla porter and German pale ale that he plans to have on tap.

“It will be good for Erie to have a couple of breweries because it will make it a destination,” he said.